Choose a Topic of Interest When Developing

Because full scale development can take a considerable amount of your time, I would advise that you choose a domain name that is in a field of interest for you. This is especially true if you have a full time job and become a developer on the side. If I didn’t enjoy the domain industry, I would have a difficult time writing this blog every day (frquently more than once a day).

When building a full website, it’s important that you have unique content that is updated as regularly as possible. Think about it for a second. When you visit your favorite websites, do they look like they’re updated regularly? I know I get annoyed when I visit some websites and the content is old – even if it’s just a day old (sometimes even a few hours old). Visitors to your developed sites probably feel the same way, and they expect to see updates.

If you want your site to be able to compete with other sites, you are going to need to spend time working on it. Before you start, I urge you to choose a topic of interest so you are less likely to get bored down the road. Although it might be more expensive to buy a great domain name, once you’ve put in many hours and days developing it, you will be happy you bought the better domain name.

Had I really known what I was getting in to at the time, I probably would have flipped TropicalBirds.com instead of developing it. Truthfully, birds aren’t that interesting to me. I enjoy learning about a variety of things, but I am not a true birder. It’s a struggle to get myself to build pages and add content to the site, but I am doing it because I know that will increase the value (as a result of traffic and revenue).

So take it from me, focus on developing on a domain name that is in a field of interest. You will be thanful for it down the road.

About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, LLC, a company that has sold seven figures worth of domain names in the last five years. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest.

Hi Elliot,
Developing is always a lot of work. Its great you are putting so much work into it.
It isn’t necessary to have fresh content all the time though. Unique evergreen content is classic linkbait as well as attracting visitors. In the long run it is often more valuable than the freshness of the content.
Freshness helps with return visitors but they may not be worth it if they are not bringing in revenue. Repeat visitors may have a lower CTR.
Stickiness is a better thing to work on since it increases the chance that people will click on ads.
Of course these guidelines change depending on the business and revenue model.
Nice job with TropicalBirds

Sometimes it is fun but then again sometimes not so much… It is what it is though and such is life.

Trial and error is great. Personally I am a big fan. The lessons learned are more important than the end result of any one given project.

You have good on-page SEO and good content but the pictures are all too small. Google prioritizes larger images… And you should have more than one or two images per page. Have a dozen. It will do wonders for you.

Also I don’t know why you do not currently have a google custom search box on that site. You should set it up and let users self serve their needs.

wannadevelop – could you point me in the direction of a site that is successfully executing the strategy of using multiple large images per page for ranking. I assume if you have a dozen that they would not all be large? Is there any particular way you should label the photos for SEO?

Thanks, when I google around and look at the sites that rank at the top and compare their setup, i guess I spend too much time in the “domaining” and “how to make money online” sectors to clearly identify this trend. I don’t see ProBlogger posting 12 images to get to the top of his niche, or John Chow going mpeg crazy, whereas Gary V-C is a vlogger that doesn’t exceed either of them.

Are there some specific sites (in the non-MMO sector) you could point me to that do it well?

John Colascione on I Bought a 4 Word .com Domain Name@Dave, I actually read this post yesterday before looking into it again. It had been a year since I revisited the list. This post was

Arockiam J (@Arojagan) on I Bought a 4 Word .com Domain NameActivatingDesire, ActivatingServices would have been a better name than just activating. If only two domains available say Activating.com and LickMyNose.com which one you will buy?

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